One of the most unique aspects of East Campus is the level of customization that is possible in each room. It is very common for a person to live in the same room for years on end, and for rooms to get passed down to other students equally excited about the prospect of modifying the room even further. As a result, East Campus rooms are almost always cozy but non-standard living spaces. I inherited a very nice lanimate floor from my room's previous owner, and I added several improvements of my own over the summer of 2018. At the beginning of the summer, there was a pile of heavy trash in the courtyard that included various types of lumber and furniture. I found an old trash chute door that had clearly suffered many years of service. After cleaning off the dirt and sanding the door down, it became a temptingly sturdy and smooth desktop surface. I then found some discarded 2x4s and 4x4s and designed and built a ridiculously overbuilt work table. The completed table weights about 160 lbs and is extremely sturdy.
Next up on the to-do list was shelving. The room originally had a loft, which I disassembled in favor of shelving. My significant other at the time found a large amount of very nice heavy--duty plywood shelves and track mount shelving supplies. With her help, I installed shelving along the full length of one wall of my room. A quick calculation shows that the shelving can theoretically hold thousands of pounds of junk before breaking free of the wall or collapsing. With extra plywood, I built a very reinforced coffee table for the room.
Once the desk, shelving, and coffee table were in place, the room was fairly close to its current state. I built an extra shelf in my closet and a luggage rack above the doorway. During the fall, I found a free futon on Craigslist and rented a Uhaul to bring it back to my room. I also crufted several small filing cabinets for storing miscellaneous belongings and cables.
MIT throws out a lot of fairly expensive things, and I found a very nice 1080p projector in the trash. All it needed was a new bulb and a little bit of tender loving care, and I had a very nice projector virtually for free. I also found a motorized projector screen and installed it on my back wall. I built a projector shelf that hung from my luggage rack and set up the projector, moving the couch to optimize the viewing angle for the screen. For extra effect, I electrical taped an RGB LED strip to the wall, so my room turns pretty colors when I turn on the LEDs.
